


The Shrink: 2 - Round Two (The Enemy Within)

by gatesmasher



Series: The Shrink [2]
Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, M/M, Psychoanalysis, daniel as shrink, jack as patient
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-06
Updated: 2014-04-06
Packaged: 2018-01-18 10:46:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1425670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gatesmasher/pseuds/gatesmasher
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Psychologist Daniel Jackson's favorite (and most difficult) patient returns for another round of therapy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Shrink: 2 - Round Two (The Enemy Within)

 

I always arrive at my office at 8:00 a.m. sharp and this wintery Friday morning was no exception. Fumbling with the keys, I nudged the door open, juggling coffee cup and briefcase, latest issue of the American Journal of Philology clenched in my teeth, a new annotated edition of Freud's "Reflections on War and Death" tucked under one arm.

This was my time, a calm easing into the day that, as a psychologist, I find I really need. Time for puttering around, updating patient files, reading emails, sending reports and recommendations. Also time for playing back my voicemail service. Since I have no receptionist and can't answer the phone during the day when seeing patients, I make it a habit to listen to and answer messages first thing in the morning and last thing in the evening.

There were four messages that morning. The first was from a former patient; she'd gone through some tough times in the Air Force, and been torn between re-upping or taking a discharge. With my help earlier in the year, she'd come to a decision, and I smiled at how confidant and excited her voice sounded as she described her new private sector job. I made a note to call her back as soon as possible.

The second message was a patient requesting an appointment change for the next week. I checked my appointment book and gave a quick return call, leaving a message that the change was okay by me.

Back to voicemail, the third message was from Jeremy.

A long-suffering and frustrated sigh escaped me.

It seemed Jeremy had called to tell me our planned Denver barhopping extravaganza (his words, not mine) was off for Saturday. Apparently he had better prospects: an intriguing opportunity (read: hot young guy) had _ahem_ ‘come up,’ which he needed to take a very up-close and personal gander at (again, very much his words). With an obscene curse in Farsi, I jabbed the delete button. He knows my cell number, he knows I don't like him leaving messages on my professional line. He does it on purpose to piss me off, to get me going, and frankly, it's working. You see, he's under the delusion that angry sex is the best kind of sex. And, no, Jeremy's not a boyfriend, just a friend. Well, okay, a friend with benefits, but still, nothing serious or long-term.

Putting him determinedly out of my mind, I played the last message, recognizing the growled voice immediately.

"I need to make an appointment. Uh, this is Jack O'Neill."

It was the Air Force Colonel I'd seen for one brief, truncated session a couple months back. He had made it quite clear at the time that he was not interested in any further sessions, but I was unlikely to forget him, for both professional and personal reasons.

"I need to talk to you. As soon as possible. Call me at the Mountain."

He gave a number, then immediately hung up. I checked the time signature. He had called just after 3:00 a.m., the tension and exhaustion in his voice practically bleeding through the line.

Checking my schedule for the day, I found I had no openings, but for O'Neill, I would make it work. No, I couldn't forget him in a professional sense: being unable to help a patient in such obvious pain was disappointing to say the least. And as for the personal reasons...well, let's just say that being gay and in Colorado Springs surrounded by the crème de la crème of the U.S. Air Force crop can either make one jaded when it comes to male beauty, or it can make you even more appreciative of a truly fine piece of ass. Um, when it comes to me and the good Colonel, it's the latter.

As I dialed the number and listened to it ring, I thought back over what I remembered of Colonel O'Neill's situation. As I recalled, he was supposed to be in therapy working toward a full reinstatement to active duty, although he wasn't very clear on this. A few days after the session, I received an emailed confirmation request from a General George Hammond, presumably O'Neill's commanding officer. I confirmed one therapy session but specified in no uncertain terms that the Colonel left my office before our hour was up, with no progress having been made. If O'Neill had parlayed that into enough to satisfy his CO, there wasn't much I could do, other than hope the troubled man had found help from some other quarter.

"Telemetry," my call was finally answered. "How may I direct your call?"

Telemetry? Oh, yes, the special assignment O'Neill supposedly worked on through NORAD. Something about 'Space' and 'Deep Radar'? More top brass military idiocy, as if anyone seeing that battle-hardened warrior would be fooled by the innocuous title for one second. "Um, yes, this is Dr. Daniel Jackson, returning a call made by Colonel Jack O'Neill?"

"Dr. Jackson? Yes, the Colonel left word regarding you. Please hold."

After a full six minutes on hold, and being subjected to the most obnoxious, jingoistic Air Force recruiting ad I'd ever had the misfortune to hear, a familiar voice barked, "O'Neill."

"Colonel? This is Daniel Jackson."

"So can I see you today?" he asked without prelude.

Okaaay... "My schedule's actually rather full, but if you don't mind coming late, say at six-thirty--?"

"I'll be there." With a click he was gone.

Of all the arrogant... Lucky for him he's so damn good-looking. Not that I would neglect my duty to a patient based on the shortcomings of his physical appearance, but...well, it doesn't hurt.

My day passed in a blur. I wasn't exaggerating, it was packed: a full slate of patients, several consults at the Academy Hospital, a phone conference with a colleague at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in New York who needed my help with a clinical trial she was running, in addition to the inevitable dry-cleaners run and a quick swallow of lunch. After I saw my last pre-scheduled patient out the door, I just had time to down a cup of coffee and pull Colonel O'Neill's skimpy file out when a brusque knock came at the door. I checked my watch. Six-thirty and five seconds. Punctual military showoff. I made sure I'd finished rolling my eyes before calling out, "Come in!"

The man who entered my office bore only a superficial resemblance to the O'Neill who had visited me a couple months previously, and I found myself standing and staring openly.

The tidy civilian clothing was gone. He wore a wrinkled set of camouflage BDUs in dark olive drab, sleeves rolled up despite the blustery weather outside. His formerly neat crew-cut was now a spiky mess.

And gone was the iron control and emotionless rigidity. After a quick glance registered myself as the room's sole occupant, the Colonel shut the door and set up a jerky pacing behind the couch, his shoulders slumped, his hands fisted at his sides. The far end of his pace brought him up to the credenza holding my Egyptian art collection. He seemed to wince at the sight of the alabaster Amon-Ra statuette, ducking his head and hunching his shoulders even further.

Like a hunter cautious of flushing his prey too early, I edged quietly over and sat in my chair. There were a couple more suspicious paces, complete with sidelong glances from a pair of bloodshot brown eyes, but my nonthreatening manner reassured O'Neill to the point that he came around the couch to the chair he had used last time, the one as far from me as he could get. He dropped down to sit stiffly, his hands griping tightly at the chair-arms.

The man all but vibrated as he sat, one booted foot tapping with nervous energy. His hooded eyes passed over me a few times, until their wandering finally slowed and he looked at me fully for the first time. The bleak despair I saw in those red-rimmed depths sparked an unprofessional desire to comfort and coddle, a desire I immediately squelched. I was his doctor, here for _him_ , not me, and I held my expression carefully neutral, being the nonjudgmental sounding board he needed.

After a long minute filled only with the sound of O'Neill's harsh breathing, the officer finally spoke. "There's--there's been a death."

"I'm sorry."

He narrowed his eyes, as if even such a simple response might have ulterior motives. I held my gaze steady, some instinct telling me to tread softly here, that the snark I employed on his last visit wouldn't work now. The smudges under his eyes were dark they looked like bruises and I wondered how long since he last slept.

We sat in silence for a minute more, however this time, he didn't offer any more speech.

"Can you tell me who died?" I finally asked.

"Kawalsky."

"And Kawalsky is...another soldier?"

A nod.

"Was it in the line of duty, or a natural death?"

He looked away again, giving something that might have been a shrug. He was withdrawing again, back into that tight ball of hostility I'd been treated to at his first session.

"Had you known him long? Was he important to you?"

Not even a shrug this time.

"Colonel, I'm afraid that in psychoanalysis, _I'm_ actually supposed to be listening to _you_."

Okay, that was a little snarky, but I made the prod as gentle as possible, and while there was still no response, I realized this was a very different reticence than during his previous visit. He didn't want to talk last time, true, but only because he was in my office under protest. This time however, he wanted to talk, I could feel it. There was a deep well of pain and passion hidden under that strictly controlled exterior, like the proverbial iceberg covered by an icy ocean.

He _wanted_ to talk but didn't know how, the man literally didn't know how.

I knew how it must have usually gone for him, a hard mission, the order for a psych exam, the typical military psychiatrist sitting there in his sterile office, _'I see from your file that Incident X occurred, how are you handling it?'_ And O'Neill's facile stock reply, _'Well, Doc, it was bad, but I know it was all for the best in the long run.'_ Then the rubber stamp of approval and reassignment.

Now, the silence stretched until O'Neill couldn't take it anymore. He jumped up, pacing again like a caged animal, his fingers trembling as he raked them through his hair.

"Colonel," I prompted as softly as I could. "Please tell me what you're feeling right now."

He shot me a look of blind panic, like a man with no tongue trying to communicate. I wondered if even his most dangerous missions had engendered a panic this bad in the stoic officer.

"One word," I coaxed. "Give me just one word."

Three more paces, then, as if dredged up from a great depth, "Anger."

I said nothing. He paused his pacing, watching me, waiting for me to jot down a bit of jargon in my notebook, lean back smugly, steeple my fingers, make a condescending shrink-like comment... But I just sat still, looked him in the eyes and tried my damnedest to project compassion and acceptance.

He stood rigidly, not pacing anymore, but not sitting either. "A couple weeks ago, we got the program off the ground. Finally. Guess you get enough geeks together, they'll come up with something eventually." The words could have been humorous, if the voice speaking them had not been so deadly flat and face so expressionless. "We had a mission. It went south."

Nothing more was forthcoming, so I spoke again, "The man who died, Kawalsky, was he a member of your command?" I took his silence for an affirmative. "A subordinate?" Again no refutation. "I think anger is a very reasonable response. Do you feel it's not allowed?"

"What good is anger now?" O'Neill demanded. "It's over, I can't change anything."

"I know that as a superior officer, you take on responsibility even for the things you can't truly control. Do you feel there was something you could've done differently--"

"I don't _feel_ I could've done something differently," he sneered. "I _know_ it. Could've been smarter, faster, more alert, I don't know, _something_..."

Without more information I was pretty much reduced to blind guessing. Taking a shot in the dark, I asked, "Did Kawalsky request something of you? Something that, as his superior, you felt you couldn't grant?"

O'Neill shook his resolutely. "No, he didn't ask a single favor, he was fucking brave as they come. But at the end, he--he wasn't himself.”

I frowned, confused. “Why?”

“I can't say.”

“What can you tell me?”

“Nothing! What do you think? It's classified, every fucking bit of it, even the parts that don't matter. This fucking project, this _fucking_ secrecy...”

Without thinking, I jotted down a quick note to pursue how his job secrets had impacted his failed marriage, and looked back up to a hostile, suspicious glare. Crap. Interacting with the man was like tiptoeing through a minefield. "Um, okay, so no details. What can you tell me?"

"You think I'm a psychopath, don't you?" he asked abruptly.

So not touching that. "Can you give me a timeline?" I continued, ignoring his question. "Did he pass away last night or--"

" _Pass away_?” he demanded in contempt. “He didn’t pass away, I fucking _killed_ him! I killed him myself, put him down like a fucking dog, watched them hose the blood off the floor--!"

He broke off, spun back into his pacing, skittish and dangerous as he prowled back and forth in front of my desk.

Hoping he'd burn off a little energy, I let him pace for a few moments, then said, "I can only imagine what you--"

In a flash that barely even registered on my stunned senses, O'Neill broke off his pacing and flung himself at me. In the time it took me to draw in a startled gasp, he had gathered up the front of my shirt in a merciless grip, and wrenched me upright, the shirt-collar digging painfully into the back of my neck.

"No! You can't imagine!" he snarled. "You have no _fucking_ idea!" Our faces only inches apart, his hot breath washed over me as he shook me in emphasis to his words. " _You can't imagine what I've done_!"

And there I was, vulnerable, alone in an empty building. No one knew I was there, no one waited on me to know I didn't return. A Friday night with no plans for the weekend, it could be days before anyone noticed I was missing, more than enough time for a highly trained Special Ops agent to kill me and dispose of the body where it would never be found. That's what they trained men like O'Neill to do.

The grip on my shirt tightened. Eyes blazing, his voice rose. "You haven't _seen_ what I've seen! _You haven't been through what I've been through_!"

"No, I haven't," I said in the steadiest voice I could manage. "Probably a good thing. If I had, _I'd_ be in therapy and I wouldn't be here to help _you_."

I'll admit it, I was scared out of my wits. It was all I could do to sit passively. Trying to oppose him physically would only trigger increased violence, and I was under no illusions that I had a chance in hell of fighting him off.

My words, however, had the desired effect of throwing him off-balance. As if a spell had broken, he let go of me with a jerk and straightened up, blinking. He gave the ghost of a smile and observed quietly, "No, I guess you wouldn't be here at that."

Before I could think of what else to say or do, he lurched into motion, all but stumbled to the end of the couch next to my chair, and collapsed, dropping his head into his hands. I could hear the sound of his unshaved stubble scritching as he scrubbed tiredly at his face.

Now was not the time for indignant berating about the manhandling of one's doctor, so, after getting my pounding heart under control, I began to speak softly. "This is what I'm hearing: Kawalsky, a subordinate under your direct command, died in the line of duty last night. Yes?"

Face still covered, he nodded.

"Colonel, I don't need any classified details. What I need to hear about is _you_. What you felt."

“Ah, just the easy part, huh?" he mumbled around his hands. "Remorse? Sorrow? Guilt? Oh yeah, got guilt, but what _good_ is it?" He lifted his head to look at me, his face as open now as it had been closed before. And if previously his eyes had been intense, now they were positively riveting. "What good is an emotion like that? Fuck, what good is _any_ emotion?”

Sitting so close now, our knees not quite touching, I could feel his body heat. He smelled of sweat, the masculine scent not at all unpleasant to me, of course, but here it spoke of weariness, anger, and too much coffee.

“I'm mad at me," he went on. "I'm mad at Hammond, I'm mad at the galaxy." The 'galaxy'? Odd way to phrase it, I thought, but he continued speaking. "And guess who else I'm mad at?"

"Kawalsky," I answered immediately.

His needle-sharp gaze speared me with surprise. "Yeah," he admitted slowly. "I'm mad at Kawalsky. I'm mad at the man for dying on me. How fucked is that? What kind of asshole does that make me?"

"Colonel, listen to me," I all but begged. "You _cannot_ control the emotions you feel. You can only control your reactions to them."

"He died under my command, my authority...my fault."

"Yes, according to the military chain of command, as his superior, it was your fault," I confirmed bluntly.

Another needle-sharp gaze, incredulous this time. "Wow, Doc, way to cheer a guy up. Good job."

"Colonel, my job is not to 'cheer you up.' Almost the opposite, in fact. It's my job to guide your journey of self-awareness."

He grimaced, muttering something about "touchy-feely crap" under his breath

"That's not going to be fun or easy, nor will it be 'cheerful.' Now, you've probably come close to death yourself on a mission."

"...Yeah, a time or two."

"And what was your attitude toward your superior?"

He heaved a sigh and grudgingly admitted, "The ones I trusted, I understood. The mission comes first. It's bigger than just 'you.' More important that you. Hell, sometimes you're not even in the top five."

"Did Kawalsky trust you, do you think?"

"I know he did."

"And was this project, this mission, important?"

He combed a reluctant hand through his hair, then scrubbed at his face again. "Yeah, that it was."

"Then you need to consider that if your positions were reversed, he would probably have done exactly as you did, and you would've forgiven him just as he must have forgiven you."

He waved a hand dismissively. "Soldiers don't _forgive_ each other," he said derisively, eager to ignore my insight, identifying the one word I'd said that he didn't approve of and attacking it. "They know what's at stake, they do what needs to be done and move on. They don't hold stupid grudges."

I raised my brows. "Not sure I've ever heard a more apt description of 'forgive and forget.'" He glared, but I just smirked, adding, "Tough guy Air Force edition, of course."

He folded his arms, refusing to speak, and I softened my smile. "My point is, that from your description, Kawalsky was every bit the soldier you are. He accepted the same risks, ran the same dangers, knew the same possible outcomes. You can and should feel sorrow, anger, remorse. You can't simply suppress these emotions. You need to acknowledge them, learn from them.”

He didn’t respond but he did seem to be listening, so I continued. "However the paralyzing guilt, the self-hatred, these things are not healthy. They're not helpful, not to you or the people around you, the other people depending on you. You need to let those negative emotions go."

Arms still crossed, he looked challengingly at me, measuring me. I held myself still, but the urge to sit up straighter was almost overwhelming, the wish to measure up in this man's eyes automatic. He was a natural born leader, and I couldn't help responding, even if I wasn't under his command.

"Self-hatred," he finally said. "You think I hate myself?"

He was expecting me to back-down, back-peddle, soften to blow to his big, bad ego. And if I did I suspected I would never see any respect in those mesmerizing chocolate-brown eyes. "Yes, on some level, I think you hate yourself," I confirmed.

He frowned and I expected another hostile comeback. But he surprised me by saying, "Sorry I scared you."

My first reaction was to deny it. I may be a psychologist, but I'm still a _guy_ , okay? "Oh, no, I wasn't--"

"Doc, your heart was hammering away like a woodpecker on steroids."

"Well, I was bit concerned," I amended huffily. "I mean I'm all alone here and no one knew I was staying late..."

"And you thought I'd off you and ditch the body somewhere and no one'd know?"

I couldn't stop a blush, but my reply was a trifle defensive, "Well, you _are_ Special Ops trained."

He stared at me with blatant disbelief. "Doc, I left a message on your voice mail! You called me back at the Mountain, I'd be the first person they'd suspect!"

"And how reassuring that you thought all that through so thoroughly!" I stared at him in righteous indignation until a twitching of his lips gave him away. Seconds later we were both grinning, then laughing like idiots.

So there was a real human being under all that hard-ass posturing after all.

"Well, you handled yourself pretty well for a geek," O'Neill admitted. "You kept your head."

I was beginning to see that from him, this was high praise. "Even with the hammering heart thing?"

"Even with that," he acknowledged with a grin. "Hell, even trained soldiers panic sometimes. Fight or flight instinct, you know."

"Words are my form of fight, I guess," I said with a shrug. Then growing serious, I continued, "Regardless, please make sure nothing like this ever happens again. If it does I may have to reassess my position as your psychologist."

O'Neill accepted the reprimand with a sober nod. "So you're okay being my-- You're okay sticking with me?"

God knows I wanted to say yes to that gorgeous and weary face, but I've never made a decision based on my libido yet and I wasn't about to start now. And if I couldn't stop a tiny fantasy of the good Colonel grabbing hold of me and sending my heart pounding with a different kind of passion, well, it's not like anyone would ever know that but me.

"Colonel, I need you to remember, I am only here to help you." I was back to begging, but I didn't know how else to get it through the man's stubborn head. "That's the _only_ reason I'm here. If you don't like that way I'm doing that, tell me, I'll try something else."

"I guess you're doing okay so far. Uh, sorry about the shirt."

I glanced down at the stretched-out, twisted mess he'd made of my neat gray polo. "I'll bill you," I said seriously. "And I'd like payment from your personal account, _not_ the taxpayers'."

"Yes, sir." His tone, while a bit playful, was respectful enough to satisfy me. No, I don't get off on power-trip games with military officers, and I could care less about the shirt, but he owed me a certain amount of professional respect or we'd get nowhere in therapy.

“This office is a place of safety for my patients, but I need to know that it's a place of safety for me too.”

“Doc, I swear nothing like that will ever happen again. I've never done anything like that before. Maybe I just needed to yell...”

“You needed to do more than yell. I can't believe they let you leave the Mountain in that state.”

“I wasn't acting like that when I left, I'm very good at hiding my feelings--" He broke off like he wanted to snatch back his last words.

"Your feelings, huh?"

He scowled.

"Can you tell me why you thought to come here? Why you called me?"

"I'm not sure. I usually just bottle stuff up."

I raised my brows reprovingly.

"Hey, it's worked okay for years now. But when I got here, I just--it just came out..."

"Well, that's good, actually. I hope that means that on some level you recognize this office as a place to safely acknowledge and explore your emotions."

He rolled his eyes at what he undoubtedly considered my shrink-speak, then asked with a challenging stare, "So, still think I'm a psychopath?"

My turn to give a needle-sharp glance. I'd certainly never said or implied any such thing, but I played along. "Well, let's consider the warning signs. 'Recklessness and bravado.'" I looked over his bland expression. "Hmm, probably not often, but yes, I can see that. 'Single-mindedness?' Definitely. 'Being weirdly calm in conflict.' Oh yes. 'A compulsive need to be in control.'" No need to comment on _that_ , I just raised my brows wordlessly.

O'Neill had the grace to redden slightly in embarrassment. "How reassuring that you have the warning signs memorized," he snapped.

I raised a brow. “Hazards of working with the Armed Forces." Sobering again, I continued, "And lastly, 'Not being shocked at things that would appall other people.'" I paused, then spoke gently. "No, I think you're actually more shocked and appalled than anyone I've ever met, although you hide it very well."

The officer’s head jerked back as if from an unexpected blow, my words obviously shocking him to the core. For one brief unguarded second, O'Neill sat utterly vulnerable, as if I'd knocked down a gate that he had thought locked and impervious, proof against any attack.

Then he dropped his eyes, almost babbling in his haste to cover the lapse. "Kawalsky'd kick my ass if he knew I was carrying on like this. He--what happened, it was worse than death, he couldn't control his own actions, he was trapped--" He broke off, staring blankly as god knows what memory replayed itself through his mind.

"Paralysis?" I guessed.

"...Yeah, trapped in his own body."

"I'm so sorry, Colonel. We can say he'd be happier to be dead, it might even be true, but it doesn't really help."

He nodded. It seemed I'd said the right thing, although I really couldn't figure out what exactly had happened. Maybe they hadn't realized the seriousness of some seemingly minor injury, maybe a piece of shrapnel that shifted and nicked the soldier's spinal cord...? O'Neill had said he'd killed Kawalsky personally, had he had to pull the plug? I would probably never know. And it wasn't really important that I knew the details, my patient's state of mind was all that mattered to me.

"He was a good soldier, a good man," O'Neill went on, "and he'll be missed. _I'll_ miss him." He quirked a smile. "I dragged him to a dozen hockey games, but he was always trying to get me to watch football. Told him I'd rather watch cricket."

I raised my brows. "Wow. You must really hate football."

"Nah, I just said that to wind him up." He sat quietly a moment, and when he looked back up at me, his cool mask was once again in place. "So, can you sign off on me yet?" he asked.

"Sign off?"

"Am I cured?"

"Of what?"

"What?"

"What?"

"Am. I. Cured."

"Cured of what? I don't even know what your problems are yet."

"You're the doc, Doc. You tell me."

"And you're the patient. You tell me. Tell me something, anything."

"I just told you lots of stuff!"

"I'm betting there's plenty more 'stuff' to be told. The most you've ever told me regarding your therapy goals was a cryptic and still unexplained statement that you want your job back. Even though you apparently still have your job."

"Aw, no one's firing me. They just want me mentally stable. As if that would help anything."

"No, of course not, why would it possibly matter if a top secret military base had a mentally unstable man in charge?"

He shot me a look of amused irritation. "You'd be surprised. Anyway, General Hammond's the one in charge. I tried to get him to accept that one session we had before as enough, but he wouldn't go for it. He's been riding my ass for weeks."

Ah, if only _I_ could be riding that delectably firm--stop it. I cleared my throat and said, "I wondered if you'd convinced your superior to sign off on that. Or if you'd gone with a different therapist."

"Nah."

"So, here we are again, back where we started two months ago. And I ask the same question I asked then. What are you expecting to gain from therapy?"

"Goddamn it!" he exploded, glaring anew.

I was unsurprised by the anger. Despite his breakthrough of a few minutes ago, there was still a world of pain simmering under O'Neill's carefully constructed facade, and it only required the smallest nudge to set it off. At least there was no more pacing.

"You really are a broken record, aren't you?" he demanded.

"Yes, I am. Please answer the question."

"Fuck! My kid is dead! That's what I need therapy for!" A hint of that vulnerable desperation shone through again as O'Neill gestured wildly, and his voice grew rough as he continued to shout. "What do I do? What do you expect me to feel? How do you expect me to act?"

"Your boy is dead," I confirmed gently. "That will never change. The sorrow and regret will never change. But your reactions, your frame of mind, those _can_ change. For the better."

O'Neill stared, the faintest glimmer of hope fighting the disbelief on his face.

"I promise you, things can get better. Will you try? Will you let me help you try?"

"...Yeah, I--yeah, I guess."

"Good," I said, smiling. "I need to ask you, though: earlier you made some comments about how I can't understand what you're going through. Well, that's true. I'm not a soldier and I will never truly understand. If you feel that you need a psychologist who is an Air Force officer--"

"No.”

"Maybe someone who can hear about the classified things you do?"

"No. Even the shrinks at the Academy Hospital don't have high enough clearance. No, you'll do."

"Will I?"

"Uh, if you still want me as a patient."

"I do."

He lowered his head, but not before I caught a glimpse of a pleased smile.

"And as my patient, I have a prescription for you."

His head shot up in suspicion and I remembered what he had said in our first session about a distrust of drugs. "Not that kind of prescription," I said, kicking myself mentally. "Not a psychiatrist, remember? No medical degree, no way to prescribe drugs. My only prescription is advising you to go home and get a good night's sleep."

To my relief, the suspicion evaporated, replaced by a chastened and charming little smile. I got up and went to my desk, grabbing a business card and scrawling a phone number on the back. He had stood as well and I returned, saying, "Okay, I'll be expecting you here at least once a week." He raised a brow at my stern tone but I ignored it. "Call me on my scheduling number to let me know when you can make your next session," I continued, showing him the front of the card, then I turned it over to show the back. "And here's my private cell number. If you're ever in a similar state to what I saw an hour ago, I want you to call me."

He scowled. "Doc, you don't want--"

"I do. If you feel the need, I want you to call me, any time of the day or night. Promise me."

He nodded slowly as he registered my seriousness. "...Okay. Uh, you give this number away to all your nut cases?"

I couldn't hold my disapproving look. "No," I said through a smile. "Only the special nut cases."

"Okay, then," he repeated with another nod. He walked to the door, and gave me a jaunty little salute with the two fingers holding the card. "See ya next week, Doc."

As the door snicked softly shut, I indulged in a satisfied sigh.

I'd be seeing him next week.

-end-  


**Author's Note:**

> Unfortunately, this series is probably destined to never be finished. Sorry.


End file.
